How to face the Equifax hack

The threat of identity theft has been a widespread fear for most of the 21st century, and this recent Equifax hack epitomizes that fear much too well. Equifax Inc., a consumer credit reporting agency entrusted with some of the most valuable information Americans privately possess, was in charge of protecting roughly 145 million peoples’ name(s), social security number, birthdate and address(es).

It is also estimated that 209,000 Americans had their driver’s license numbers and credit card numbers under Equifax’s fallible supervision, which, minding the magnitude of what just took place, was not very mindful of their computer systems being infiltrated in March. Furthermore, these two major breaches were done by the same cybercriminals.

Once Equifax learned that they had lost this substantial sum of consumer information on July 29, the agency would wait to inform the public of the hack until Sept 7. It is still estimated that cyber criminals took this data in the middle of May. During this long time in between July and September, three senior executives sold their shares in Equifax to the sum of 1.8 million dollars.

With 40% of the national population more susceptible to identity theft, former consumer credit reporting professionals John Gamble, Joseph Loughran and Rodolfo Ploder, after leaving their respective positions at Equifax, would not be reached for comment.

With causations come the affected

A common question among those affected has been, “how was I ever vulnerable to this?” Firstly, Americans are just about obligated to give those varieties of personal data to agencies like Equifax for reasons that will be expounded upon later.

Secondly, Equifax’s former CEO Richard Smith was quoted recently that fraud was worth utilizing for business means, which deals to how poorly incentivized companies like Equifax can get when a dubious bunch become encharged. But all things considered, here is the more plausible explanation: By paying cell phone and/or credit card bills, loans or filing for bankruptcy sometime in the past seven years, agencies like Equifax basically revolve around anything that could impact someone’s credit score. Student loans are another cause for concern, but this total does not nearly touch those already laid out.

Recourse options

For the people at UW-Parkside and beyond, there are still some productive measures you can take. Your initial focus should be heading to www.equifaxsecurity2017.comto see if you are one of the millions of people affected. Now, those who have learned that they are, here are two considerable options: order a credit report immediately and stay mindful of its current status, or go as far as to freeze your credit. Doing this requires more energy and out-of-pocket money though, but for some, it has been the best recourse taken.